This Tiong Bahru View residential area was built under the Selective Enbloc Redevelopment Scheme to replace the now demolished public housing units in Bukit Merah View buildings 110, 111, 113 and 114. (Map: EdgeProp Singapore)
A five-room HDB cotton flat at 9B Boon Tiong Road in Bukit Merah has sold for a record $1.588 million ($1,317 per square foot).
This makes it the most expensive HDB resale flat sold in Singapore to date, beating the previous record of $1.569 million set in January when a five-room design, build and sell (DBSS) flat at 139A Lorong 1A Toa Payoh changed hands.
The 111 sqm five-bedroom apartment in Boon Tiong Road is located above the 35th floor and has been on the 99-year lease for eight years, which began in January 2016. The property is called Tiong Bahru View and consists of four blocks – 9A, 9B, 10A and 10B Boon Tiong Road.
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According to a press release from PropNex Realty on April 30, the seller was represented by one of its real estate agents and the purchase option was exercised on April 28. As of April 30, the transaction was not yet included in the official HDB transaction data.
This Tiong Bahru View estate was built under the Selective Enbloc Redevelopment Scheme to replace the now demolished social housing units at Houses 110, 111, 113 and 114. 114 Bukit Merah View.
Current resale transactions can be viewed using EdgeProp’s property analytics tool Landlens. (Map: EdgeProp Singapore)
According to Lim Yong Hock, senior managing director at PropNex, homebuyers are willing to pay more than $1 million for resale apartments with top features. These qualities include a high floor with spectacular views, a relatively long lease term and location in a convenient residential area within walking distance of an MRT station.
“The Boon Tiong Road flat basically ticks all the boxes. Moreover, we are seeing a steady demand for five-room flats for resale in suburban locations, as five-room flats are not usually offered in HDB’s build-to-order projects in prime locations closer to the city,” says Lim.
In the Tiong Bahru View estate, 43 apartments have been sold for at least $1 million since July 2018.
In particular, in Block 9B Boon Tiong Road, 13 $million flats were sold on the secondary market – including 3 four-bedroom flats and 10 five-bedroom flats (excluding the recent record deal). The resale prices of the 10 five-bedroom flats ranged from $1.05 million to $1.4 million.
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248 million dollar apartments sold in Q1 2024
In the social housing resale market, record prices have been broken three times so far this year.
In January, a 118sqm five-room DBSS-style flat at 138C Lorong 1A Toa Payoh sold for $1.54 million (S$111.5 million per sq ft), beating the then record price achieved when a massive 179sqm HDB flat at Moh Guan Terrace sold for $1.5 million last June.
But the record resale price was broken later that month when another 1,259 sq ft five-bedroom flat in the neighbouring block 139A Lorong 1A Toa Payoh was sold for $1.568 million ($1,246 per sq ft). Three months later, the record was broken again with the sale of the Boon Tiong Road flat on April 28.
Data from PropNex shows that the number of HDB flats resold for $1 million or more is steadily increasing. In 2022, 369 such flats were resold and in 2023, the figure was 469 units. In Q1 2024, 185 units of resale flats valued at $1 million changed hands – the highest such sale in a quarter.
This month, 63 such apartments were resold, bringing the total to 248 units in the first four months of 2024. PropNex expects the number of million-dollar resale apartments to remain high in 2024, possibly surpassing the 2023 figure.
“Despite the higher number of million-dollar flats sold, they still accounted for a small fraction of all HDB flat resale transactions, about 2.8% in the first four months of 2024,” Lim says.
He adds: “Apart from the multi-million dollar resale flats, we observe that overall demand for HDB resale flats remains healthy, with transaction volumes in Q1 2024 up 8% quarter-on-quarter to 7,068 flats. For the full year 2024, we forecast HDB resale volumes to be around 26,000 to 27,000 units.”
Read also: Four-bedroom apartment at Pinnacle @ Duxton hits property record at $1,409 per square foot
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